Stephen Leather - Nightfall

‘That sounds a tad misogynistic,’ said Jenny.

‘I love women,’ said Nightingale.

‘That’s so not true,’ said Jenny. ‘You like some women, you tolerate the rest.’

‘I open doors for them, I give up my seat on buses.’

‘On behalf of womankind, thank you so very much.’ She sipped her wine. The women at the other table laughed again and one shouted at a waiter to bring another bottle of champagne. ‘Having said that, I do see what you mean,’ she said. She put down her glass and took the book out of the carrier-bag. ‘So, here’s the scoop. This wasn’t written by Ainsley Gosling. He would have been reading it.’

Nightingale raised an eyebrow. ‘So, who did write it?’

‘So far as I can tell it’s the diary of somebody called Sebastian Mitchell. The first entry is in 1946. The most recent was twelve years ago. There are notes in the margin that aren’t in mirror Latin so I’m guessing Gosling wrote them.’ She put it on the table. ‘I’ve only read bits – it’ll take for ever to read the whole thing. My Latin’s rusty and it’s a pain having to read it in the mirror. But I can tell you that this guy Mitchell was some sort of Satanist. You’ve heard of Aleister Crowley, right?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘He was a big-time Satanist. Mitchell studied under him. Crowley died in 1947, the year after Mitchell started writing his diary, but while Crowley enjoyed his infamy, Mitchell preferred to hide his light under a bushel and this was never meant for publication.’

‘It says all that in the diary?’

‘It mentions Crowley, yes, but the diary isn’t about him. It’s about how Mitchell was trying to summon devils. A sort of “how to” book, detailing what he did, the pitfalls and perils, what worked and what didn’t.’

‘This keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?’

‘Just because it’s written down it doesn’t mean it’s true. I kept a diary until I was fifteen, full of adolescent ramblings.’

‘Now, that I’d like to read,’ said Nightingale. ‘Gosling was using this book. It was open on his desk – it might well have been the last thing he read. I need to know what he was thinking about before he killed himself.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Is there stuff in there about selling souls?’

‘Jack, you know that’s nonsense.’

‘I need to know what he believed,’ said Nightingale. ‘It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s nonsense, what matters is what he believed. Is there stuff in there about selling the souls of children?’

‘It’s a handwritten diary, Jack. Mitchell could have been as crazy as…’ She left the sentence unfinished and reached for her glass.

‘As my genetic father?’

Jenny avoided his eyes. ‘I’m not saying he was crazy. But he did kill himself – there’s no getting away from that.’

‘What does it say about selling souls, Jenny?’

Jenny sighed. ‘You have to summon a devil,’ she said. ‘Not the devil, but one of his minions. In the book, Mitchell describes the different sorts of devils and what they do. So, if you want to sell a soul you have to call up one of his minions.’

‘How do you know which devil to summon?’

‘You’re not taking this seriously, are you?’

‘Just tell me what the book says.’

Jenny nodded slowly. ‘Okay. According to Mitchell, there are sixty-six princes under the devil, each commanding 6,666 legions. And each legion is made up of 6,666 devils.’

Nightingale frowned as he struggled to do the calculation in his head. ‘There are three billion devils in hell?’

‘It’s a big place,’ said Jenny. ‘Look, Jack, Mitchell was delusional – the book’s proof of that. No one in their right mind believes in a hell full of devils.’

Nightingale drained his beer and waved at a waitress for another bottle. ‘Here’s the thing, Jenny. The way I see it, there are two possibilities. One, he sold my soul to a devil, and on my thirty-third birthday my life as I know it will be over.’

‘Which is nonsense.’

The waitress arrived with his next Corona. Nightingale took the bottle and raised it to Jenny. ‘Which is nonsense,’ he agreed. ‘Two, he was as mad as a hatter. There was something wrong with him, paranoid schizophrenia, early Alzheimer’s, bipolar, I don’t know.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘A few bricks short of a wall.’

‘You’re still worrying about the heredity thing?’

‘And you think I shouldn’t be?’

‘I think it’s obvious he was having problems,’ said Jenny. ‘That doesn’t mean you will.’

‘Mental problems, Jenny. And mental problems can be hereditary. My father was mad so I might be headed that way too.’ He pointed at the book in front of her. ‘Anyone who wrote that must be crazy, and anyone who believed in it must have been even crazier. My dad blew his head off with a shotgun. Maybe…’ His voice tailed off.

‘What, Jack? What is it?’

‘I was a negotiator – you know that. Everyone thinks that negotiators are like they are on TV, running around talking to hostage-takers, getting villains out of banks and persuading them to hand over their guns before anyone gets hurt. But it’s not like that. Most of the time it’s domestics that have got out of hand or it’s sad buggers wanting to kill themselves – or to be talked out of killing themselves.’ He took a long pull on his beer. ‘Christ, I want a cigarette.’

‘That’s the beauty of the legislation,’ said Jenny. ‘You’re only allowed one pleasure at a time.’

‘Sometimes they just want someone to talk to,’ Nightingale went on. ‘There was one woman out in Tower Hamlets – every time she had a fight with her husband she’d pick up a knife, sit in her garden and threaten to cut herself. A negotiating team would go out, and after an hour or two and a few cigarettes she’d give us the knife and start crying and saying she loved her husband even though he belted her every time he had a few drinks inside him.’

‘She wasn’t really suicidal?’

‘She just wanted someone to talk to, and by threatening to harm herself, she got it. I saw her three times over the years. Knew what brand of fags to take her and what buttons to press when I got there. Emma, her name was. She’s probably still at it.’ He sipped his beer, then took another long pull. ‘It wasn’t hard to empathise with her. She was trapped in a life she hated, with a man who showed emotion through violence, and she’d had half a dozen miscarriages that were probably because of the drink, the drugs and the smoking. You could understand what was upsetting her. And once you understand you can negotiate. You can tell them what they want to hear.’

‘And she wanted someone to care?’

‘That was all she wanted. Someone to listen to her, to prove that she mattered, that her life amounted to something.’

‘And did you really care or were you faking it?’

‘I cared – of course I cared. She was a human being in pain. How could I not care?’ He finished his Corona and signalled to the waitress again. ‘But the ones who really want to kill themselves, they’re a different ball game. You could look into their eyes and you’d know, just know, that something wasn’t right. You’d know without a shadow of a doubt that they were going to do it, and that the only reason you were there was because they wanted an audience.’

‘Why would they want an audience?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘Who knows? There’s no logic to what a crazy person does. That’s what crazy is.’

‘Crazy is as crazy does?’ said Jenny. ‘Very Forrest Gump.’

‘Yeah, life is a box of chocolates,’ said Nightingale. ‘In my father’s case, Black Magic.’